The beginnings and development of a New Zealand music: The life ...

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development as a composer did not keep abreast with developments in
composition overseas. What began as a fashionably modern style in the
late 1930s and early 1940s (stemming particularly from the 'modernism'
of Vaughan Williams), was, to a large degree, outmoded by the early
1950s.
By mid-century, the tide had ebbed on the twentieth-century
nationalism of Sibelius,. Vaughan Williams, Bartok and Copland. The 1940s
had witnessed a widening interest in the serial ism of Webern and
Schoenberg. The first steps were being taken towards the. development of
electronic music. Political and geographical boundaries were washed
away by a growing wave of eclecticism.
To illustrate this point, it is worth comparing the chronology
of Lilburn's first period works with some of the major overseas
compositions •.
Festival Overture (1939) was written in the same year that
Bartok completed his Mikrokosmos along with his sixth and finaL string
quartet. Vaughan Williams (then 67) had begun work on his Symphony No.5,
Kodaly completed his The Peacock Variations, and Rodrigo the now famous
household piece Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra. Sibelius
had long since stopped writing, yet his works were proving immensely
popular (nowhere more so than in Britain). Copland had recently
completed EI Salon Mexico (1936) but had yet to write his 'American'
ballets Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944). Stravinsky was at
the height of his neo-classical period -in the process of composing
Symphony in C (1938-40), Prokofiev had begun work on his sixth.
(1939-40), seventh· (1939-42) and eighth· (t939,,:,~4) .. piano. sonatas,
whilst Shostakovich completed his Symphony No.6. Although Schoenberg
and Webern·had both passed the peak of their serial explorations, their
music was still relatively unknown (in no small part due to the rise of
Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s). John Cage had, by 1939, invented
his 'prepared piano' and had taken his first, tentative steps towards
electronic music with Imaginary Landscape No·. 1(.1939) :··at thaLstage,
however, his influence was barely felt even on his native California.
By comparison, a dozen years later, Lilburn's Symphony No.2
(1951) was written in the same year that Boulez (then 26) composed his
attention-drawing Polyphonie X. Cage had consolidated his reputation as
the spear~ead
for the growing 'avant-garde' and had begun exploring
indeterminacy. His Music of Changes, based on materiaL from the I Ching'
was written in 1951, and the following year he wrote his silent piece
4'33" for piano. In 1952, Stockhausen (then 24) began work on his
seminal pieces Kontrapunkte (1952-3) and KlavierstUcke I-IV, the